Fair enough, its not quite the same thing. Though Home Depot has a ton of its own products now too - they are doing the same thing inside physical retail stores rather than online only.

For pharmacy items where there is some regulation around the quality of the product, I find generics/store brands to be great. For products that are not regulated in some way quality is all over the place. If you search Amazon for "ul listed usb charger" you will mostly see results for products that are not UL listed - there are probably 5 times more unlisted products for sale there than listed products - Amazon is pushing a bunch of cheap and high-profit crap at me even when I try to avoid it.

What's your evidence that we get better outcomes for consumers?

Giving consumers the same basket of goods at a lower cost just increases their real income, purchasing power, and overall standard of living. Amazon is effectively distributing billions of dollars of charity to those who need it the most. They lose $2 billion a quarter on retail. That's $2 billion per quarter in subsidies to consumers.

...which is classic anti-competitive behavior. That isn't a free and fair market - it's one that's in the process of being captured by a few large incumbents.

Except that they'll quickly recoup that "subsidy" by raising prices after they've dumped their competition.

If they raise prices then they invite an instant flood of competition and lose their monopoly. They have no power to raise prices and restrict competition. Their only competitive advantage is pricing. Amazon's only profitable products are AWS and its stock. The benefit of losing $2 billion a quarter doing retail is debatable. Would you prefer a world without amazon's subsidies given that they have no power to exploit anyone?

Your theory is that Amazon is spending $2 billion a quarter even though it gets them no long-term advantage?

If you're right, then capitalism is hopelessly bad at optimization and we should scrap it. But what I think is more likely here is that Amazon's execs understands the economics of their business way better than a zero-karma free-market fundamentalist whose pseudonym is a genitalia joke.

They get a long-term advantage in that their stock continues to rise. The stock is the product. And AWS enjoys having a household brand attached to it. And don't be mad that someone with a genitalia username is making a point your brain is incapable of making a cogent argument against, in spite of it eliciting a strong enough emotion for you to leave a comment.

Their stock will only rise if they eventually make more money. Meaning that investors expect them to be able to make that $8 billion/year up eventually. Presumably through pricing, because selling stuff at above-cost prices is where their money comes from.

Also, I only made fun of your username and your lack of karma because you were making absurd unevidenced claims like, "They have no power to raise prices and restrict competition." If you're going to say things like that, then it's not so much making a point as doing what Frankfurt calls bullshiting. [1] That combined with your very low karma suggests you're not really worth the time of a serious reply. Note the link in my bio: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

And at least I don't resort ad hominem arguments. That's what happens when lower IQ individuals have nothing else to say and don't know how to deal with the cognitive dissonance that arises when truth clashes with their feelings. Feelings based on cartoons and TV shows that programmed you to viscerally react that way.

And what do you propose in place of capitalism? You sound like a child. Why would you want to force companies to make a profit on every product? There's something called a loss leader. How about just prohibiting all forms of charity? You make zero sense.

Good question. Actually I don't have any data for that. Anecdotally many "store brand" items of things that seem commodity-like, are things that I can get the same quality as a name brand at a lower price. This is better for me, and I suspect better for most consumers in a static situation. But the market is dynamic. Does this stifle innovation of new products? Does the reduced revenue of "brand" named producers, especially smaller ones hurt? Does the price competition produce a race to the bottom that ultimately doesn't benefit consumers? I don't know. But I would say that the considerations of increased regulations of "generics" vs increased regulation of "online markets" seem to me to involve different tradeoffs.

Sadly, the American grocery store is not optimized for consumers, so we can't draw many inferences from it. It's true that no-frills versions of commodity products are a good deal compared with heavily marketed products. But I don't see any reason to think letting individual stores dominate that market segment would be necessarily better for consumers.